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To: The Raven

Long term, my guess is the Iraq war will be seen as being fought year-by-year as extraordinarily well. There were no really super bad judgments, and non-productive tactics and strategy were redone just about as soon as could have been. The situation in Iraq was unpredictable, and not even the best of long-term strategic thinkers familiar with Iraq would have been able to predict what would happen in Iraq after Baghdad was taken.


27 posted on 09/09/2008 9:48:00 AM PDT by bvw
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To: bvw

Overall agree, but ... “There were no really super bad judgments” ... there was one: The decision to disband the Army by Paul Bremer in May 2003 was in retrospect a fatal blunder.

The phrase, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, comes to mind. The disbanded army was unemployed and looking for a way to restore pride. Had we instead kept and reformulated it, we would have been 2-3 years sooner with Iraqi security forces, and the core of the insurgency would not have the expertise they had. Many of those former insurgent Sunni baathists are now back on ‘our’ side, fighting Al Qaeda. Had they been with us the whole time, we’d have cut years off the fighting.

Long term, yes, the key strategic victory is being won, and the US was flexible enough in strategy to get there.


32 posted on 09/09/2008 10:37:56 AM PDT by WOSG (McCain/Palin 08)
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